


let the light in

by narumitsu



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, KH3 spoilers, if that wasn't already a tag then i guess it is now!, vanitas deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 15:18:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17706716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narumitsu/pseuds/narumitsu
Summary: Vanitas may have been damaged, but he wasn't beyond repair.Or: What happened to Vanitas in canon made me sad so I rewrote his final scene to give him the love he deserves!!





	let the light in

**Author's Note:**

> A huge amount of what Vanitas thinks and says in this story is based on the backstory given to him in the official Birth By Sleep novel! If anyone reading this fic hasn't read Vanitas's novel backstory I highly recommend you do, as it gives a lot of really interesting insight to his character that the games don't spell out!

Vanitas’s keyblade clashed against those of Sora and Ventus, and he battled them with all of his strength, desperate for nothing more than to reclaim the missing remnant of his heart. That was all he’d ever wanted, really, and in order to get it he was perfectly willing to rip both of his opponents’ bodies to shreds and force the light of his lesser half’s heart to combine with his own blackened soul.

But in the end, of course, he was defeated. Again. That was how it always was for him, wasn’t it? He was a failure, a mistake, a broken being with no chance to be put back together, and that’s exactly what he was doomed to be from the start. He had failed his original purpose, to forge the χ-blade, and now he was failing at something as simple as just finding a way to be whole.

And he was sick of it. He was so sick and tired of his pathetic half-existence that he didn’t care what happened anymore. If he was meant to die here, in the same miserable graveyard where he’d been born, that would be fine with him.

So Vanitas stood there, leaving himself vulnerable as the mask concealing his face shattered in half.

“Your... face...!” Sora gasped, looking at him with astonishment. Vanitas smirked. He found it amusing in a way, to watch Sora be so baffled at their near-identical appearances.

“I’m the piece of Ventus that was taken away. And you’re the piece Ventus needed to be whole again,” he explained, gesturing toward his own heart and then back at Sora. “So... why shouldn’t you and I look exactly the same? You define me, Sora, the same way that Ventus does. We are brothers who, together, make a greater whole.”

“Then why won’t you stand by our side?!” Sora yelled, his fists clenched in anger and frustration. “Instead of with darkness?!”

Vanitas thought the answer should be obvious. How could he not stand with darkness, when being a pawn of it was the very reason for his existence?

“Because I _am_ darkness. And I do stand by your side. I’m the shadow that you cast. How much closer could I be?”

“But I didn’t—“ Sora began to protest, but Ventus stepped forward and cut him off.

“But I didn’t ask for this,” he said quietly. “To be sifted apart, nice and neat—“

“Oh, and you think I did?!” Vanitas shouted. “You think I _asked_ to be separated from you? You think I _asked_ to be ripped in half and then left here alone, with only the unversed for company, while you were off having fun with your new friends? Did you even know that I can sense part of what you feel?”

Sora flinched, taken aback at the sudden outburst, but Ven was more surprised at something else:

“You can... feel what I feel?”

“I’ve always been able to. Why do you think I hated you so much?” Vanitas said, every word seeping with bitterness. And as he spoke, a small ring of unversed formed from the darkness around him. “You got to be happy, but I was stuck here with nothing but the monsters my emotions create! And nothing to do except kill them over and over each time they appeared. Of course, that only made more appear. Fledgling emotions born from the fragments of my own, and the more I felt, the more I _hurt_ , the more would appear in a neverending cycle.”

Ven’s eyes widened. “Killing the unversed hurts you?”

“Hmph. Don’t act so surprised.” Vanitas’s scowl and golden eyes showed nothing but rage, but the smallest hint of sadness was hidden in his tone. “I told you already, didn’t I? They’re a part of me. Of course it hurts.”

He didn’t know why he was sharing any of this. He couldn’t explain why he was persisting when he knew that if he let it, his body could perish right here and this pointless, embarrassing display would be put to an end. But he persisted all the same, and when he saw the way his lesser half looked at him like he was some lost puppy in need of a home, it made him wish he had the strength to pound them both into the dust and sand they stood on.

“Vanitas...”

“Save it,” he spat out. “I don’t need your pity.”

Slowly and cautiously, Ven glanced at the unversed still surrounding Vanitas, then back up at Vanitas himself, and walked closer to him. Sora stood firm, ready to pull his keyblade out and defend Ven if needed.

“...I didn’t ask to be sifted apart,” Ven said, “and maybe you didn’t either. But still, we should be free to choose. Not just light, not just darkness. _We_ decide what we are.”

That made Vanitas laugh. It was both funny and infuriating how naive his lesser half could be.

“Don’t you get it yet, Ventus? I don’t _get_ to choose. My very nature is darkness. It’s what I’m made of, and nothing can change that—not unless you and I join together again. Xehanort made that decision for both of us the day he split us up.”

“And you’re okay with that?!” Sora cut in.

“Are you idiots even listening?” Vanitas snarled. “It doesn’t matter if I’m okay with it or not. What I _am_ is—“

”Darkness. Right.” Ven nodded to show he understood. “I get that, but it doesn’t mean you have to stand against us. You can still make a choice.”

Something about Ventus’s words caused Vanitas to freeze up, and the unversed dissolved back into him. At the same time, more pieces of his already broken mask fell apart bit by bit, causing his face to be almost fully exposed.

He thought about what Ventus said, and the scorn in his expression slowly changed into surprise. Ventus understood that he was made of darkness, that it was all he could ever be? And he still wanted him on their side in spite of that? Wanted _him_ to make a choice, as if his fate hadn’t been set in stone from the day he was created?

“What...?”

For the first time in almost all of his life, Vanitas didn’t know how he should feel or what else he was supposed to say. So instead, he did something he’d never tried before: he just stopped and listened.

“Ven is right!” Sora exclaimed. “Xehanort may have told you that darkness is nothing but evil, but I know he’s wrong! And if you help us beat him, you can show him that!”

“You were only helping him because you wanted to be whole again, right?” Ventus said softly. “But don’t you see? If _I’m_ already whole, just as I am, I’m sure you can be too. You just have to learn how.”

By now, all of the bitterness and aggression that Vanitas had been filled with just minutes ago was gone. Replacing it was a strange sense of calm, and of confusion at the show of compassion he was being given—here he was, Ventus and Sora’s cold and dark shadow, and they were trying their best to get their warm light through to him. He couldn’t comprehend it.

“But... that’s not...”

Memories of Vanitas’s time training with Xehanort—no, of being _forced_ to train by killing unversed endlessly in this wasteland, no matter how much pain it caused him—ran through his head.

He thought of how Xehanort told him that he was empty, so empty that it was the very meaning of his name. How Xehanort always said that sharpening his pain into rage was the only way he could get stronger, and so he’d hurt himself over and over by fighting the unversed until the rage inside him was overflowing. How Xehanort would applaud him for doing so, because he needed Vanitas to be strong in order to use him for his own plans, plans that an abomination like him was destined to be a weapon for. How Xehanort laughed at his suffering and told him that becoming the χ-blade was the only way to stop it.

He thought about how all of that was the whole reason he was standing here damaged beyond repair now, and he didn’t know how he could possibly be whole on his own as Ventus claimed. All he knew was that it hurt.

“Xehanort always said—“

“I don’t care what he said,” Ven insisted. “I’m me, and you’re you, Vanitas, and that’s okay. Darkness and all.”

“It... it is?”

“Yeah! It is!” Sora agreed. “Practically everyone has darkness in them, after all. And even if that’s all you’ve got, I still believe you can use it for good!”

“So, please... if we’re really brothers, then let’s work together—darkness _and_ light,” Ventus pleaded. “No more fighting each other like this, okay?”

Ventus held out his hand, and Vanitas choked out a sob. He tried to wipe the tears away, to keep from being seen like this, but doing so only made the very last pieces of his mask crumble to the ground. He felt the light of the sunset on his face, and suddenly, he found that its rays didn’t feel blinding and harsh, but hopeful and inviting. He found that he no longer wanted to die here—all he ever wanted, really, was to be accepted, and the hand reaching out to him signaled that he already was.

“...Okay,” he said as he took Ventus’s hand. “I’ll help you.”

“Awesome! Then let’s do this!” Sora exclaimed, and the overjoyed grin on his face was something Vanitas couldn’t believe he was seeing. In fact, Sora and Ventus were both smiling at him, and the feeling that gave him was one he’d only ever gotten to experience by sensing it in his ~~lesser~~ other half.

He let go of Ventus’s hand, and he smiled to himself. And he knew that this feeling, one he was finally learning to feel all on his own for the first time, was _happiness_. Happiness and forgiveness and trust and—

“Hey, Vanitas?” Ventus said.

“Yeah?”

“You should call me Ven! All of my friends do!”

 _Friendship_. With him of all people, Sora and Ventus had reached out to share their friendship.  If Vanitas could hold that in his heart, he thought, maybe it really was true that he could be whole as he was. Sure, he was darkness, and he was damaged, really badly damaged, but he wasn’t beyond repair.

The thought put a fire in his eyes that came not from boiling rage and hate, but from joy. It made him genuinely laugh, in a non-malicious way, for the first time.

“All right, Ven,” he said with a grin. “You ready to go kick Xehanort’s ass?”

“Ready!” Sora and Ven said in unison.

The three of them turned away from the battlefield and toward the red and orange and golden shades of the sunset and, with no time to waste, they ran to fight not against each other, but side by side.


End file.
